Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 12, 2006

Hite State Park, UT
We set off into already blistering heat for Hite, UT, knowing little of what to expect. Some of us ended up playing a game of leap frog along the road with enormous trailer trucks towing some unknown material; it could have been soup, it could have been toxic waste, but whatever it was, it was very heavy as we went faster up the steep inclines through the canyons than the trucks did.

It was our first day where we truly, definitively in the middle of the desert. This novelty wore off by the time we got to lunch, but luckily found space to hide from the heat under very small brush, almost big enough to be called trees. Some of us fell asleep at lunch for about 2 hours; that set us back some as far as getting to the campsite was concerned. A ways after lunch, we passed through Fry Canyon, UT, which consists of a hotel (with a very kind proprietor) and precious little else; it was very hot. Not long after that we saw off to our right a geological formation called Jacob's Chair, because it looks like a chair; it was very hot then, too.

Some time later, after seeing numerous fingers of rock standing straight up in the desert, with heat piling on and a certain sense of deliriousness taking over, I saw just beyond a cattle guard for non-existent cows a sole tire. I figured it must have accidently been left behind by someone, and then I saw some water jugs and some food on the side of the road, and I was confused. A mile or two later I put it together, and understood that the water jugs were a water stop that the vans had left behind for the riders, and that the tire was a marker for the stop, and that I know was now stuck with the tire.

When we finally arrived at the Hite campground on Lake Powell after being with an Englishman biking from San Francisco to New York, we were excited by the prospect of the lake, until, as it so happened, the lake had lost some 20 feet in the past 5 years, and that it was now mostly mud. Also, Hite is somewhat lower than the surrounding terrain and so it is amazingly hot, and also there is no shade and we were camping. Tents were set up in the rather strong "breeze", and heat stroke was warded off with tepid/near-boiling water. In time, the sun set, and the temperature did not, and the red dust of Hite continued to swirl around us and into our gear, and would remain there until everything was thoroughly washed, well after we arrived in San Francisco. But, the next day we would head to Capitol Reef.

-James